Where does this album land for you compared to other Paradise Lost eras, and does it feel like a fresh statement or a summation?

Seventeen albums in and I think that this is one of their best. After The Plague Within and Obsidian I thought the ceiling was set, but Ascension seems colder, heavier and strong. Holmes sounds like a man who has nothing left to prove and everything left to say. Mackintosh's guitar still carrys that specific ache that hooked me in the nineties. Nothing here feels like a band looking back, I think it sounds like a band that knows exactly what they're doing.